New Hyde Park officials and residents on Thursday said they have reservations about the Long Island Rail Road’s plans to eliminate the village’s three street-level crossings to make way for a third track.
Village officials and some of the more than 100 residents at an informational meeting said the benefits of closing the crossings may not be worth the required road closures and shifts to traffic patterns.
“When you plug one hole, another leak opens somewhere else,” New Hyde Park Deputy Mayor Lawrence Montreuil told the crowd at the New Hyde Park Road School.
Village of New Hyde Park officials called Thursday’s meeting to present information to residents and hear concerns before six public meetings set for Tuesday and Wednesday on the $1.5 billion project to add a track to 9.8 miles of the LIRR’s Main Line between Floral Park and Hicksville.
Promising to eliminate the crossings, notorious for delaying traffic and causing deaths, is one way Cuomo has tried to distinguish his proposal as less invasive than the Metropolitan Transporation Authority’s 2005 plan.
But village officials and some of the more than 25 residents who spoke Thursday said plans for the crossings released May 5 in a scoping document have disadvantages despite any potential traffic and safety improvements.
Closing or limiting traffic at Covert Avenue, South 12th Street and New Hyde Park Road would divert hundreds of cars through adjacent residential streets during construction and inconvenience nearby businesses, Montreuil and New Hyde Park Mayor Robert Lofaro said.
“The bottom line is a lot of people want this done because there’s a lot of money to be made on it,” Lofaro said. “We live here. We don’t really care about money. We care about our life.”
Cuomo has also pledged to build the project entirely within the LIRR’s right of way and avoid taking residential properties. But many residents said they doubt Cuomo and the MTA will fulfill those promises or stick to estimated construction timelines.
The scoping document, an outline of an environmental study, lists options for building underpasses at three crossings in New Hyde Park, two in Mineola and two in Westbury, and says each would take between six and nine months. The third track would take three to four years to build, the document says.
But the LIRR took six years to send Roslyn Road underneath the tracks in Mineola and even longer to do the same at Herricks Road, Lofaro said.
The massive $6 billion cost overrun and estimated 14-year delay to MTA’s East Side Access project to build an LIRR station under Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal also indicates the third track’s costs could grow beyond the state’s estimates, resident Sandy Cippola said.
“If you’ve been involved with Long Island Rail Road, you know that you can never believe what they say,” he said. “They say one thing and do another.”
State officials have said the third track will be built under a private contract that incentivizes expedited construction.
The environmental review will detail a construction schedule and examine how construction could impact the surrounding area, the scoping document says.
“Ultimately, when final, the proposed project will take advantage of new construction methods available aimed at shortening construction periods,” Cuomo transportation spokeswoman Beth DeFalco said in a statement.
Residents also said they doubt planners’ claims that the third track will not bring additional freight trains through the village, which they said generate more noise and vibrations and pose health risks.
The LIRR is unlikely to see a significant freight increase, the scoping document says, and the third track would not change that.
Residents echoed previous concerns that a third track would increase train traffic through New Hyde Park, exacerbating noise and vibration problems without bettering train service in the village.
Planners will study all those potential impacts, the scoping document says, and examine how train schedules could be changed to better serve the area.
Project supporters say a third track would improve service by allowing rush-hour service in both directions and reducing bottlenecks caused by train breakdowns.
Cippola and village officials said the LIRR could accomplish those goals by upgrading the LIRR’s existing infrastructure, such as outdated switches and unelectrified tracks. Village mayors along the Main Line have pointed to seven such fixes they say LIRR President Patrick Nowakowski has suggested.
“If you take Long Island Rail Road and you’re waiting on the platform, they always say, ‘The 8:38 is delayed seven minutes due to’ what? Signal trouble,” Cippola said.
Lifelong New Hyde Park resident Tony Genovese, Jr. said he thinks the LIRR should make every upgrade it can, including eliminating the crossings and adding the third track.
“Something’s got to be done,” he said. “If we don’t do it now I think we’re just going to keep talking about it and fighting about it.”
Thursday’s meeting followed a press conference at which three dozen local officials called on Cuomo to release specific details about the third track itself.
Tanya Lukasik of the organization Open Nassau said the scoping document was missing important details, such as a definition of the LIRR’s right of way, that residents should have before giving feedback next week.
Planners should have also met with residents in addition to local officials as they developed the scoping document, said Lukasik, of Hicksville.
DeFalco said planners have held more than 100 meetings with local officials and community leaders and incorporated their input into the scoping document. More meetings will come as the project moves forward, she said.
Planners will hold more public meetings after the environmental study is complete and incorporate concerns into the final environmental impact statement, the scoping document says.
“Next week’s meetings are the first opportunity for the public at large to comment on the project but by no means will be the last chance to give feedback,” DeFalco said in a statement.
